Sir Isaiah Berlin, UK (1909-1997)
Sir Isaiah Berlin was born in Riga, Latvia in 1909. He is regarded as having been one of the most remarkable men of his time and one of the leading liberal thinkers of the century. His defence and refinement of what he saw as the essential conception of freedom achieved classic status. In his lecture "Two Concepts of Liberty" Berlin advocated negative liberty (freedom to do as one pleases without obstruction) and demonstrated how positive liberty (freedom to rule oneself) can be perverted into the freedom to achieve self-realisation according to criteria laid down, or imposed, by self-appointed arbiters of the true ends of human life. Berlin also advocated the concept that not all values can be jointly realised in one life, or even in a single society, and therefore there can be no single objective ranking of ends nor uniquely right set of principles by which to live.
Most of Berlin's academic career was at Oxford University, where he became a fellow of All Souls (1932), professor of social and political theory (1957), and Master of Wolfson College (1966). His philosophical works include Karl Marx (1939), Historical Inevitability (1954), Two Concepts of Liberty (1959), and Vico and Herder (1976). Isaiah Berlin died in Oxford, UK, in November 1997.